Ofcom, the UK communications regulator has today announced the winners of the 4G auction that's been taking place over the last couple of months. There were five winners of the auction; Everything Everywhere (EE), Hutchinson 3G UK Ltd (Three), Niche Spectrum Ventures Ltd (BT), Telefonica UK (O2) and Vodafone.
Between the five bidders £2.3 billion was raised with Vodafone paying for the most bands at a cost of £790 million. This is only 2/3 of the £3.5 billion that the UK government was hoping to get from the bidding process. Everything Everywhere (EE) has struggled to attract users to their existing 4G services which they released a few months ago and the UK government are already makes plans for 5G services to come online in less than ten years time. Is this why the bids are so low?
The bidding breakdown is as follows:
Telefonica (O2) who have won the bid for some of the 800 MHz spectrum are obliged to provide coverage to 98% of the UK population by 2017.
Mobile companies are expected to release their services within the next six months which should create quite a bit of competition on both price and data allowances.
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